4 ms·

Is the world a better place because of that? What if the Kinect and Move had spent their research budget building on top of the Wii instead of reinventing it?

by geofft 8y ago

Is the world a better place because of that? What if the Kinect and Move had spent their research budget building on top of the Wii instead of reinventing it? Would the world be a better place? (Personally, I find it baffling to see people espousing "research should be private because it yields better outcomes" on a site for an industry so deeply indebted to open source. We have empirical evidence about which approach works better, and it's not the closed private research lab one.)

0815test 8y ago
Stealing and violating privacy via industrial espionage is not "open source". You're free to make your own research public, or to pay a company for full IP rights on their research and then release the results openly. But what the Chinese are doing is not the same. Even making access to their domestic market conditional on releasing proprietary IP, is in fact a hidden tariff which is not in line with free and fair trade.
- geofft 8y ago
  Yes, I'm not claiming that violating the laws and norms is a good thing. I'm asking if the laws and norms are defensible and produce a better society. If not, then the argument needs to be "We follow unjust laws for the sake of the broader principle of the rule of law, and we work to change unjust laws so respect for law is maintained," not "These outcomes are bad."
  - 0815test 8y ago
    The problem is that we're not just talking about a relatively-benign violation of things like copyrights, patents or trade secrets ("IP"): Chinese hacking is a severe violation of privacy; and their practice of forcing IP releases from foreign firms is blatantly unfair given that no reciprocity is involved, and indeed China apparently claims that they're uniquely allowed to engage in such policies because of their status as a "developing country" - itself a rather dubious claim given their reported economic performance. Privacy (and protection of physical property, in general) and fairness in trade are basic principles and far from "unjust".
    - geofft 8y ago
      Privacy of companies or of individuals? I don't think privacy of companies is a right, so that argument isn't convincing to me. (Specifically, I believe companies have no particular inherent right to existence the way people do. Companies are creations of law to serve specific goals that benefit people; we should give them whatever privileges are necessary to accomplish that, and not what's not. Privacy of certain things like customer data and things like HR conversations seems pretty clearly helpful, but mostly because that's a proxy for privacy of individuals, not because violating it would violate the company's "privacy.") There's an easy solution to reciprocity: abandon IP protection in the US, too. My entire claim is that that would lead to a better world. If we want to not do that, we should either defend that it would lead to a worse world, or admit that we're not making arguments based on what's best for society. That's why I found the argument about "but IP protection brought us Kinect and Move" unconvincing: it's not clear at all to me that the outcome was better than in the world where the US didn't recognize IP protection.
      - NicoJuicy 8y ago
        A better world by removing IP protection or the cheapest copycat wins by removing IP protection. I just think it has to be tweaked for preventing abuse. But it had it's advantages. If you remove IP protection, why would a company spend millions on research on R&D to innovate something. Look at the products that got copied from Kickstarter by China before they launched, those people really got their dream crushed. Ps. Kinect was just an example, look for the bigger picture ;)
        0815test 8y ago
        > Look at the products that got copied from Kickstarter by China before they launched, those people really got their dream crushed. Ideas are cheap. These Chinese companies are supposedly taking pre-validated (via crowd funding) ideas from Kickstarter and then manufacturing them. How is this a bad thing? It introduces a desirable competition for the best ability to execute on those plans.
        8y ago
NicoJuicy 8y ago
1) Why would the world be a better place? What a nonsense question that has nothing to do with anything. I said: the consumers have more options. Personally, I prefer the Kinect. So yes, I'm for diversity. 2) In a forum of "open source" people. What does this has to do with it? I find it baffling you don't see the difference. How do you earn your money? Work at a traditional company or did you create you own open-source product with donations? I'd be damned if you are one of the 0,01% here that earns all his income through open-source. I find it baffling you don't see the simple difference between software parents and IP ( without software). Fyi. You are not earning your money through open-source. Otherwise you would know that if not the golden life either. 3) Research should be public? Wtf? So every company should share everything? Wtf? How realistic is that??? Answer: it's not. It's never going to happen. Stop dreaming and come back to reality please. ---- In a lot of the responses here, I honestly think that I have to explain it to a 12-year old. Because they don't seem to grasp reality. Or trolls, or Chinese state sponsored propaganda. I really don't understand the low quality of responses, constant Whataboutism ! Unrelated responses). That baffles me at this moment.
- 0815test 8y ago
  > Research should be public? > Wtf? So every company should share everything? > Wtf? How realistic is that??? That's not what "research should be public" means. It just means that the existing institutions which the public funds for research (universities and research labs) should have their remit expanded to include "private" R&D for public benefit; and that, additionally, the public sector should routinely buy out valuable private R&D, perhaps via formally-established "prizes" - instead of merely allowing it to be monopolized via IP protection. We spend a lot of tax money already to fund private R&D by firms, that could instead be directed to fund these mechanisms.
  - NicoJuicy 8y ago
    We are talking about Samsung's research in the thread. Please don't change to subject to your liking. Private firms are mostly subsided by government for employment, not for their research
- 8y ago
greedo 8y ago
In your world, we wouldn't have multiple terminals in *nix, cuz why wouldn't open source devs just expand on vi instead of wasting resources and time on developing emacs...
- geofft 8y ago
  That doesn't follow - both vi and emacs have been able to be aware of each other and if necessary incorporate techniques from each other, and yet they both exist separately. At no point did I argue that we should prevent people from making two separate products if they want. I only argued that we should prevent people from keeping research and discoveries secret, and gave an example that different products could build on each other. vi and emacs have in fact had that opportunity, so this example supports my point that it's a reasonable way for the world to work. Sometimes building on each other means collaborating; something it means friendly and open competition for the sake of taking multiple approaches to a goal (which is different from competition-for-the-sake-of-competition by forcing your competitors to walk the same path you already walked, but several steps behind you). Also, spacemacs.

geofft 8y ago

1) If you do not think the legitimate purpose of laws is to make the world a better place and nothing else, we do not agree on fundamentals, and I see you as a dangerous enemy, someone who would be a dictator or oppressor if they could. Using the government's monopoly on violence to make you happier with no concern for the rest of society is an evil thing. Why is the legitimate purpose of laws to make you happier as a consumer?? What does that have to do with anything? (And, to the point I was originally making, why do you believe you wouldn't be even happier in the world I describe? You'd get a Kinect researched with awareness of what the Wii and Move tried and didn't, so it'd either be better or cheaper or perhaps both.) 2) Again, the legitimate purpose of government is not to preserve the way I make money, either. You're making the "Yet you participate in society!" argument. Yes, I do. The fact that I think a certain course of action is individually rational for me to preserve life and health does not mean I think the availability of that course, to the exclusion of other possible courses, is inherently good or worth preserving. But just so you know: I maintain systems infrastructure for a hedge fund, all based on open-source software (Debian, OpenStack, Ceph, etc.). The hedge fund operates on secrecy of market data and insights but not on secrecy of fundamental research (and also making e.g. Linux available to everyone makes everyone more productive, but making our ideas about alpha available to everyone makes the alpha go away). To be clear, working at a hedge fund does not mean that I think the existence of hedge funds is inherently good or that I am opposed to societies where hedge funds don't exist, any more than working at Blockbuster means you're opposed to Netflix existing. My work is all on things that would benefit the world more if they were public and would benefit my employer no less; it's just difficult to maintain a separation between publishable work and sensitive algorithms, so I don't do as much as I'd like. But I'd like to do more, and I've quite loudly disagreed with our internal policies on this, because I think I can do better for the world and for our company if allowed to be public about everything. And my work, in any case, is keeping them running, not creating new private ideas. The public knows how to create sandwiches, and yet Subway is profitable. And it is beyond clear that my company would be less profitable if open source software did not exist, or if we used a proprietary stack/vendor for everything. 3) Yes, it's realistic. You haven't presented an argument beyond "Nyeh, it's not," so I say, "Nyeh, is too."